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Breaking News out of Nashville - four Tennessee lawmakers were arrested and lead out of the state house in hand cuff’s. The inditements are out of Memphis and there will be a press conference about the arrests and charges at Noon EST / 11 AM CST. We will update as more news comes out.

The rumors involve possible extortion, use of public land and similar events due to business dealings. John Ford seems to be at the center of the events. The lawmakers are from BOTH parties so this is not a partisan attack.

**** UPDATE’S BELOW ******

11:30 - WATE and WBIR both have news stories out now about the arrests.

11:45-
The Tennessean (Nashville Paper) also as a story about it - full story here
Nashville New’s Channel 5 story

From WATE story -

The charges reportedly stem from a federal investigation into business dealings of state Sen. John Ford of Memphis.

The lawmakers arrested are Ford, Sen. Ward Crutchfield, (D) Chattanooga; Sen. Kathryn Bowers, (D) Memphis; Rep. Chris Newton, (R) Cleveland.

The Tennessean story adds the fact that a state computer recycling contract that pushes a particular vendor is likely the reason the arrests.

****** UPDATE *******

1:45 - The Chattnooga Paper has the full story - here - with a focus on the current and former Chattanooga area politicans that were arrrested. It seems that this is the conclusion of a two year investigation called “Tennessee Waltz” that basically had the FBI using a front company - E Cycle Management - gave the current legislators (and some former ones that were arrested as well) bribes for favorable bills. It looks like this will be a far reaching case so be sure to read the entire story

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 26th, 2005 at 11:07 am and is filed under Local, News, Personal, Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.